A gaggle of supporters had surrounded the press corps in a ballroom at the lake front hotel in the town of Meredith. Paul laughed, and his supporters cheered.

“I feel very good,” Paul added. “Your health depends on your mental status as well too. So there’s nominal ages and then your mental health, but I feel excellent. The only thing frustrating about the campaigning is I don’t get quite as much exercise as I get when I’m not campaigning so energetically. But [I] feel great.”

Paul’s town hall meeting drew more than 300. His son Rand, the Kentucky senator, introduced him.

A WMUR reporter asked the elder Paul if he agrees with Newt Gingrich’s claim in Sunday morning’s debate that Mitt Romney spouts “pious baloney.” Paul ducked the opportunity to take an explicit shot at Romney, grouping him with the entire field – including Gingrich.

“I wouldn’t use those words,” he said. “I put ‘em all in the same category. All the candidates support the status quo. They basically have been on different sides of the issue. I do get the negative charges made [against me], but nobody has challenged me on being a flip flopper. That doesn’t occur. But I think they’re all in that same category – they don’t challenge the status quo. They’ve been part of the establishment. They don’t have any real cuts. They’re not challenging the foreign policy. They’re not looking at the Federal Reserve. They’re all very close together philosophically, and I think the country is looking for something completely different.”

Asked which states he can do well in beyond New Hampshire, Paul acknowledged that his campaign is focused on competing in caucus states where they can rack up delegates.

“South Carolina will be a nice test for us because it’s a bigger state,” he said of the primary there. “If we do well there, that’ll encourage the fundraising. And it alerts other people to the message. They’ll say, ‘What’s he taking about? Maybe we ought to look at that. Maybe he does have some answers.’”